Month: April 2010

The film stars Borgnine as Marty Piletti, a heavy-set Italian-American butcher who lives in the Bronx with his mother. Unmarried at 34, the good-natured but socially awkward man faces constant badgering from family and friends to get married. Not averse to marriage but disheartened by his lack of prospects, Marty has reluctantly resigned himself to bachelorhood.

After being importuned by his mother into going to the Stardust Ballroom one Saturday night, Marty connects with Claraâ€”a plain school teacher who has been nastily abandoned by her blind date. Spending the evening together, Clara and Marty realize their emotional connection. The two part with Marty’s promise to call the next day.

Fearing the romance could spell her abandonment, Marty’s mother belittles Clara. Likewise, Marty’s friends are unimpressed because of her plainness, and try to convince Marty to forget about her. Harangued into submission, Marty doesn’t call Clara.

Back in the same lonely rut, Marty realizes that he is giving up a chance at love with a wonderful woman. Over the objections of his friends, he impulsively dashes to a phone booth to give Clara a call.

While circus animals are being transported, Mrs. Jumbo, one of the elephants, receives her baby from a stork. The baby elephant is quickly taunted by the other elephants because of his large ears, and they nickname him “Dumbo”.

Once the circus is set up, Mrs. Jumbo loses her temper at a group of boys for making fun of her son, and she is locked up and deemed mad. Dumbo is shunned by the other elephants and with no mother to care for him, he is now alone, except for a self-appointed mentor and protector, Timothy Q. Mouse, who feels sympathy for Dumbo and becomes determined to make him happy again.

The circus director makes Dumbo the top of an elephant pyramid stunt, but Dumbo causes the stunt to go wrong, injuring the other elephants and bringing down the big top. Dumbo is made a clown as a result, and plays the main role in an act that involves him falling into a vat of pie filling. Despite his newfound popularity and fame, Dumbo hates this job and is now more miserable than ever.

To cheer Dumbo up, Timothy takes him to visit his mother. On the way back Dumbo cries and then starts to hiccup so Timothy decides to take him for a drink of water from a bucket which, unknown to him, has accidentally had a bottle of champagne knocked into it. As a result, Dumbo and Timothy both become drunk and see hallucinations of pink elephants.

…

After this performance, Dumbo becomes a media sensation, Timothy becomes his manager, and Dumbo and Mrs. Jumbo are given a private car on the circus train.

The film now opens with John Dolittle as a child talking to his dog (voiced by Ellen DeGeneres). He asks his dog questions, one being “Why do dogs sniff each other’s butts”? Her response is that it’s their way of shaking hands. His concerned father (Ossie Davis) hears the question and says that the dog doesn’t have any idea what he said. He was wrong. He finds this out when John meets his new principal and sniffs his butt. The dog obviously knows something is going to happen. When his father hires a minister to remove the evil from him (and freaking him out), the dog saves him by biting the minister. The dog is then taken up for adoption. John is very upset and stops talking to animals as his father teaches him to hate them.

In the end, John is now a both human doctor and a veterinarian. Maya’s egg hatches, revealing to be an alligator. The rats are mad that the ending is happy, but the owl shows up and chases them away, trying to eat them (luckily, she doesn’t). John and Lucky are seen walking to the circus to visit the tiger and talking about their future as friends, while the song “Talk with the Animals” plays in the background.

The story begins in the back of a hill, located in a forest during the summer. The tree that the chipmunks Alvin (voiced by Justin Long), Simon (voiced by Matthew Gray Gubler), and Theodore (voiced by Jesse McCartney) live in is cut down and driven to Los Angeles to become a Christmas tree. Once in LA, the Chipmunks meet struggling songwriter David Seville (Jason Lee) who had his latest song rejected by JETT Records executive Ian Hawke (David Cross) who was Dave’s college roommate. Dave once had a relationship with his next door neighbor, Claire Wilson (Cameron Richardson). She broke up with him because she felt he was too busy, irresponsible and he had no time for her.

After winding up at Dave’s interview, the Chipmunks hop into his basket and follow him home. Once at home, Dave discovers the Chipmunks, and is accidentally knocked unconscious. Upon waking, he kicks them out until hearing them sing “Only You (And You Alone)”. Dave then makes a deal with them; they sing the songs he writes, and in exchange he provides food and shelter for them. However, all does not go well, as Dave’s job presentation is ruined by their coloring on it, and when Alvin tries to set the mood for his dinner with Claire, things become weird and she rejects him after he tells her that “My life is being sabotaged by talking chipmunks”. To make it up to Dave, Alvin, Simon, and Theodore go to Ian in an attempt to record a song and get a record deal.

An officer of Maine Fish and Game researching American beaver populations is scuba diving in Black Lake, Aroostook County, Maine, when he is savagely attacked and bitten in half by something unseen in the water. A tooth is found in the diver’s remains and, as it appears to be a prehistoric fossil, a request is made for assistance to the Natural History Museum in New York City. Paleontologist Kelly Scott (Bridget Fonda) gets the job, mainly because her boss, with whom she has had an office affair, wants her out of his way so that he can pursue another relationship with one of Kelly’s co-workers.

Upon arriving in Maine, Kelly informs Fish and Game officer Jack Wells (Bill Pullman) and Sheriff Hank Keough (Brendan Gleeson), who himself witnessed the fatal attack, that the tooth appears to be reptilian in nature, and is not a fossil, but something much more recent. They also meet Delores Bickerman (Betty White), one of few people living on the lake, who claims to have killed her husband.

Later that afternoon, a helicopter arrives at the camp where we are introduced to Hector Cyr (Oliver Platt), an eccentric mythology professor, flamboyant multi-millionaire and crocodile enthusiast who believes, despite Hank’s intense skepticism, that the creature doing the attacks is indeed a crocodile. While the four are out exploring the lake, the creature is shown settling under Kelly and Hank’s canoe. Hector’s radar begins to pulsate as Kelly and Hank are thrown off their canoe and into the water.

…

The last scene shows Mrs. Bickerman feeding bread crumbs to what appears to be many baby crocodiles implying the two adults were a mating pair. During the end credits the surviving adult crocodile is seen tied to the back of a flat-bed truck speeding down a road.

Two scientists, Dr. Kinder (Kathleen Turner) and Dr. Heep (Christopher Lloyd) use genius baby studies to fund their Babyco theme park. At age two, the children are due to ‘cross over’, learn to talk, and forget their universal knowledge. One mischievous toddler, Sly, makes repeated attempts to escape the “Kinder” lab and one night, he actually succeeds. What Sly does not expect is to run into his twin, Whit, in a mall playground. Although Sly and Whit share a telepathic bond, they have no idea of each other’s existence. While the guards from the lab capture Whit, mistake him for Sly, and take him back to the Kinder lab, Sly is taken home by Whit’s adopted mother. After Dr. Kinder discovers the mix-up, she decides to do a cross evaluation on the twins. However, when she comes to Bobbin’s Place, she realizes that Dan Bobbin can understand babies. After the attempts to retrieve Sly fail, Dr. Kinder decides to move the labs to Lichtenstein. The babies at Bobbin’s Place hypnotize Lennie, the bus driver to drive to Kinder Labs. Once at the labs, Sly goes to the control room to set the robots from the theme park on the lab scientists. When the Bobbins return home, their natural daughter Carrie tells her father that the children are in the Kinder Labs. At the end of the fight Dr. Kinder captures Whit and takes him to the helicopter pad on the roof. Robin and Dan Bobbins chases them to the roof. Dr. Kinder gives Whit to a man on the helicopter. Dr. Kinder and Dan fight. Dan falls and hits his head. Robin fights Dr. Kinder. In the fight Dr. Kinder reveals that they are not related, but that Robin was adopted at age two. Just then police helicopters come. Sly and Whit come together on the roof to cross over. Some time later Dan awakens with his memory intact. He wants the secrets of life, but as the twins have crossed over they no longer know those secrets. Carrie, their sister, reveals that the secret of life is love.

Tim (Rudd) is a rising executive who “succeeds” in finding the perfect guest, IRS employee Barry (Carell), for his boss’s monthly event, a so-called “dinner for idiots,” which offers certain advantages to the exec who shows up with the biggest buffoon.

When a family of Dakota Territory pioneers is violently abducted and a posse is assembled to venture into the badlands and rescue them, the frightening truth they discover in the hills leads them to believe man may not be the only hunter stalking the Old West. The year is 1879, and beyond the fringes of civilization a handful of courageous pioneers maintain settlements while exploring the unknown territories. One night, under the shimmering Western stars, a family from one of these settlements is brutally dragged into darkness by a group of unknown invaders. At first the kidnappers are thought to be hostile Native Americans, and a posse forms to bring the family back home safely. Venturing out into the unmapped territories is an Irish immigrant desperate to find his lost love, a naÃ¯ve teen eager to prove his worth, a former slave seeking his fortune after gaining his freedom, and a hardened pair of battle-weary Indian fighters. But nature’s wrath and the tomahawks of hostile tribes aren’t the only threats that this group will be forced to contend with, because as the bodies begin to multiply and the truth about the abductors gradually emerges, these rescuers will find out that there are forces in this world that can’t be described in human terms — and that seem to have motivations beyond our comprehension.

A species, called “Burrowers” by the Natives, used to subsist on buffalo. When white settlers depleted the Buffalo the species began to survive on human meat – first hunting nearby Indians and later the settlers. One tribe in particular, the Ute, have experience in combating the hunter-species. The “Burrowers” first lace their victims by cutting them and drugging them with a toxin. The victim is then buried alive and eaten only after decomposition has begun. By the time the film’s protagonists meet up with the Ute their number is severely depleted, but the Ute method of drugging someone already infected with “Burrower” toxin proves effective. When the “Burrowers” go to eat the twice drugged victim they themselves fall asleep and are vulnerable, especially to the rays of the sun. However, the surviving member of the posse, the Irishman Coffey, is unable to discover exactly what the Ute used to drug the “Burrowers”. The film ends with the suggestion that the “Burrower” attacks will continue. In addition to the environmental message about changing ecosystems the film assesses prevailing attitudes towards Blacks and Natives amongst the settlers in the West, with especial focus on the brutality of the US cavalry.

“The He-Man Woman Haters Club” is a club of young, local school-aged boys, all of whom refuse to play with girls and detest them, and the boys are entering their go-cart, the “Blur,” in the annual go-cart race, and one of the members, Alfalfa, the best friend of the club president, Spanky, is selected to drive the Blur in the race. However, Alfalfa hadn’t attended the meeting, so the boys search for him to find Alfalfa in the middle of a romantic boat ride with his sweetheart, Darla. Since Alfalfa’s relationship with Darla interferes with the club’s rule of forbidding a club member to play with or have a romantic relationship with girls, the other club members try to spoil Alfalfa and Darla’s romantic boat ride in hopes of breaking them up. However, their plans fail, and Darla and Alfalfa schedule a romantic picnic in the clubhouse.

Soon after, the other He-Man Woman Haters secretly spy on the couple during their picnic, until Alfalfa notices and quickly brings his date with Darla to an early end, and he makes Darla hide in the clubhouse until he can convince the other boys that he and Darla weren’t doing anything in there. But Darla thinks that Alfalfa is ashamed of her, so she tries to escape the clubhouse by driving away in the Blur and crashing through the clubhouse walls, causing the clubhouse to catch on fire. The boys quickly try to put the fire out (Buckwheat and Porky, the youngest club members, were sent to call the fire department, but neither one of them knew the number for 9-1-1, so the club did not get any professional help from fire-fighters, despite the fact that the fire station was near the public telephone that Buckwheat and Porky tried to use to call for help, but they didn’t notice it). Alfalfa faints, after the clubhouse catches on fire, and while he is out cold the other boys finish putting out the fire and Darla tosses the ring Alfalfa gave her earlier back to him before leaving with a wealthy new boy named Waldo, who tried to win her over earlier and nearly succeeded. After Alfalfa regains conciousness, the other club members punish him by forcing him to guard the Blur every night and day until the day of the race. Alfalfa tries to win Darla back, by going to her ballet recital and writing a love letter.

…

The boys manage to build a new go-cart in time for the race, and Alfalfa is the driver, as originally planned, though Woim and Butch have repainted the Blur and pass it on as their own go-cart, and try to cheat their way to winning during the race. Darla, who is racing with Waldo, eventually gets tired of Waldo’s attitude and starts to yearn for Alfalfa, who still wants her back, more, so Waldo abandons Darla in the middle of the race and takes off. Darla then climbs aboard the He-Man Woman Haters’ go-cart and races with Alfalfa and Spanky, and eventually, the He-Man Woman Haters win the race, much to the chagrin of Waldo, Butch, and Woim. Darla reunites with Alfalfa, and their romantic relationship starts all over again. When being awarded their trophy and prize money, Spanky gets to meet his favorite racer, A.J. Ferguson, who turns out to be a woman. She kisses the top of Spanky’s head, though Spanky himself doesn’t mind it, his opinion about females stubbornly hasn’t officially changed, though the rest of the club members besides Alfalfa also gain girlfriends after the race. And finally, Spanky gives in to his now girl-loving friends, and “Welcome Women” is added to the new clubhouse sign, for the club members have managed to purchase a new clubhouse with their prize money.

Allen Gamble (Will Ferrell) and Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg) are partnered NYPD detectives who work in the forensic accounting department and rarely see any action. Gamble is more than happy with his job while Hoitz has been assigned against his will after a public incident with his quick trigger finger. They idolize the city’s top cops Danson (Dwayne Johnson) and Manzetti (Samuel L. Jackson), but when an opportunity arises for Gamble and Hoitz to step up, things do not quite go as expected.